Book review: the rise and fall of the UK Film Council by Gillian Doyle, Philip Schlesinger, Raymond Boyle and Lisa W. Kelly

In The Rise and Fall of the UK Film Council, Gillian Doyle, Philip Schlesinger, Raymond Boyle and Lisa W. Kelly explore the shifting importance given to film policy in Britain by focusing on the establishment of the UK Film Council under the Labour government that came to power in 1997. This organisational study gives a cogent and lucid account of the Film Council’s aims and achievements, as well as the challenges it faced, before its eventual abolition in 2011. However, the political and economic focus leaves both audience reception and the Council’s influence on cinema as an art form largely unexplored, writes Geoffrey Nowell-Smith

The status of the world's land and marine mammals: diversity, threat, and knowledge

Knowledge of mammalian diversity is still surprisingly disparate, both regionally and taxonomically. Here, we present a comprehensive assessment of the conservation status and distribution of the world's mammals. Data, compiled by 1700+ experts, cover all 5487 species, including marine mammals. Global macroecological patterns are very different for land and marine species but suggest common mechanisms driving diversity and endemism across systems. Compared with land species, threat levels are higher among marine mammals, driven by different processes (accidental mortality and pollution, rather than habitat loss), and are spatially distinct (peaking in northern oceans, rather than in Southeast Asia). Marine mammals are also disproportionately poorly known. These data are made freely available to support further scientific developments and conservation action

'It Ain't Me Babe', a response to Brunette's review

Peter Brunette 'Nowell-Smith Meets Visconti, Redux: The Old and the New' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 9 no. 16, March 2

Re-imagining German Film History

Thomas Elsaesser _Weimar Cinema and After: Germany\'s Historical Imaginary_ London and New York: Routledge, 2000 ISBN 041501235X 480 pp

Minnelli en het melodrama

In artikel wordt betoogd dat het genre of de vorm als melodrama bekend is geworden, voortkomt uit het samenkomen van een formele geschiedenis in de strikste zin van het woord 00 0 21 26

Olivine-poor sources for mantle-derived magmas: Os and Hf isotopic evidence from potassic magmas of the Colorado Plateau

The contribution of olivine-poor lithologies (pyroxenite, eclogite, etc.) in the mantle to the composition of mantle-derived melts is a growing topic of discussion in light of results suggesting that some magmatic characteristics are not easily explained by melt derivation solely from peridotitic sources. To investigate this issue, we have examined the Hf and Os isotopic composition of potassic magmas from the Navajo Volcanic Field of the Colorado Plateau. Most of the magmas have Os isotopic compositions much more radiogenic than observed for any uncontaminated oceanic basalt. The Os isotope compositions of these samples overlap those measured for crustal/upper mantle eclogitic xenoliths carried by nearby intrusions. Compositional and Os isotope systematics, however, suggest that the characteristics of the magmas are not determined by crustal contamination, but rather are the result of melting of pyroxene- and mica-rich veins/layers in the lithospheric mantle beneath the plateau. Once generated, the melts of olivine-poor lithologies interacted with surrounding metasomatized peridotite to create the compositional spectrum from katungite to minette. One component of this compositional variation is the appearance of strong relative depletions of high field strength elements in the minette end-member, suggesting that this chemical signature, common in convergent margin magmas, may be caused by melt-wall rock interaction